1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to the field of peripheral interface controllers and, more particularly, to encryption and secure memory management unit (MMU) functionality in peripheral interface controllers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Integrated circuits in a variety of devices include one or more peripheral interface controllers to communicate on peripheral interfaces to other components of the device. A variety of industry-standard interfaces can be used, such as Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), PCI Express (PCIe), Universal Serial Bus (USB), Firewire™, etc.
Because the peripheral interfaces are connected between components (e.g. on a printed circuit board (PCB)), the data transmitted on the peripheral interfaces can be somewhat more easily observed by a third party as compared to data that remains within a component. For example, the data may be protected by copyright or may be otherwise protected digital content that requires a license to view. The third party may be attempting to steal the data.
Additionally, a variety of storage devices (e.g. solid state storage such as Flash memory, magnetic storage such as fixed or removable disk drives, optical storage such as compact disk (CD) or digital video disk (DVD) storage, etc.) can be connected via a peripheral interface. Data stored in/on such storage devices may be accessible to a third party as well. Accordingly, protecting the data while stored on the storage device may also be needed for security.